Part 29 (1/2)
”I was a loving fool--I wors.h.i.+pped a woman once, and believed she could care for me; and then I took a helpless child and fostered him; and I watched him as he grew, to see if he would care for me only a little-- care for _me_ over and above the good he got from me. I would have torn open my breast to warm him with my life-blood if I could only have seen him care a little for the pain of my wound. I have laboured, I have strained to crush out of this hard life one drop of unselfish love.
Fool! men love their own delights; there is no delight to be had in me.
And yet I watched till I believed I saw what I watched for. When he was a child he lifted soft eyes towards me, and held my hand willingly: I thought, this boy will surely love me a little: because I give my life to him and strive that he shall know no sorrow, he will care a little when I am thirsty--the drop he lays on my parched lips will be a joy to him... Curses on him! I wish I may see him lie with those red lips white and dry as ashes, and when he looks for pity I wish he may see my face rejoicing in his pain. It is all a lie--this world is a lie--there is no goodness but in hate. Fool! not one drop of love came with all your striving: life has not given you one drop. But there are deep draughts in this world for hatred and revenge. I have memory left for that, and there is strength in my arm--there is strength in my will--and if I can do nothing but kill him--”
But Balda.s.sarre's mind rejected the thought of that brief punishment.
His whole soul had been thrilled into immediate unreasoning belief in that eternity of vengeance where he, an undying hate, might clutch for ever an undying traitor, and hear that fair smiling hardness cry and moan with anguish. But the primary need and hope was to see a slow revenge under the same sky and on the same earth where he himself had been forsaken and had fainted with despair. And as soon as he tried to concentrate his mind on the means of attaining his end, the sense of his weakness pressed upon him like a frosty ache. This despised body, which was to be the instrument of a sublime vengeance, must be nourished and decently clad. If he had to wait he must labour, and his labour must be of a humble sort, for he had no skill. He wondered whether the sight of written characters would so stimulate his faculties that he might venture to try and find work as a copyist: _that_ might win him some credence for his past scholars.h.i.+p. But no! he dared trust neither hand nor brain. He must be content to do the work that was most like that of a beast of burden: in this mercantile city many porters must be wanted, and he could at least carry weights. Thanks to the justice that struggled in this confused world in behalf of vengeance, his limbs had got back some of their old st.u.r.diness. He was stripped of all else that men would give coin for.
But the new urgency of this habitual thought brought a new suggestion.
There was something hanging by a cord round his bare neck; something apparently so paltry that the piety of Turks and Frenchmen had spared it--a tiny parchment bag blackened with age. It had hung round his neck as a precious charm when he was a boy, and he had kept it carefully on his breast, not believing that it contained anything but a tiny scroll of parchment rolled up hard. He might long ago have thrown it away as a relic of his dead mother's superst.i.tion; but he had thought of it as a relic of her love, and had kept it. It was part of the piety a.s.sociated with such _brevi_, that they should never be opened, and at any previous moment in his life Balda.s.sarre would have said that no sort of thirst would prevail upon him to open this little bag for the chance of finding that it contained, not parchment, but an engraved amulet which would be worth money. But now a thirst had come like that which makes men open their own veins to satisfy it, and the thought of the possible amulet no sooner crossed Balda.s.sarre's mind than with nervous fingers he s.n.a.t.c.hed the _breve_ from his neck. It all rushed through his mind--the long years he had worn it, the far-off sunny balcony at Naples looking towards the blue waters, where he had leaned against his mother's knee; but it made no moment of hesitation: all piety now was trans.m.u.ted into a just revenge. He bit and tore till the doubles of parchment were laid open, and then--it was a sight that made him pant--there _was_ an amulet. It was very small, but it was as blue as those far-off waters; it was an engraved sapphire, which must be worth some gold ducats.
Balda.s.sarre no sooner saw those possible ducats than he saw some of them exchanged for a poniard. He did not want to use the poniard yet, but he longed to possess it. If he could grasp its handle and try its edge, that blank in his mind--that past which fell away continually--would not make him feel so cruelly helpless: the sharp steel that despised talents and eluded strength would be at his side, as the unfailing friend of feeble justice. There was a sparkling triumph under Balda.s.sarre's black eyebrows as he replaced the little sapphire inside the bits of parchment and wound the string tightly round them.
It was nearly dusk now, and he rose to walk back towards Florence. With his _danari_ to buy him some bread, he felt rich: he could lie out in the open air, as he found plenty more doing in all corners of Florence.
And in the next few days he had sold his sapphire, had added to his clothing, had bought a bright dagger, and had still a pair of gold florins left. But he meant to h.o.a.rd that treasure carefully: his lodging was an outhouse with a heap of straw in it, in a thinly inhabited part of Oltrarno, and he thought of looking about for work as a porter.
He had bought his dagger at Bratti's. Paying his meditated visit there one evening at dusk, he had found that singular rag-merchant just returned from one of his rounds, emptying out his basketful of broken gla.s.s and old iron amongst his handsome show of miscellaneous second-hand goods. As Balda.s.sarre entered the shop, and looked towards the smart pieces of apparel, the musical instruments, and weapons, which were displayed in the broadest light of the window, his eye at once singled out a dagger hanging up high against a red scarf. By buying the dagger he could not only satisfy a strong desire, he could open his original errand in a more indirect manner than by speaking of the onyx ring. In the course of bargaining for the weapon, he let drop, with cautious carelessness, that he came from Genoa, and had been directed to Bratti's shop by an acquaintance in that city who had bought a very valuable ring here. Had the respectable trader any more such rings?
Whereupon Bratti had much to say as to the unlikelihood of such rings being within reach of many people, with much vaunting of his own rare connections, due to his known wisdom, and honesty. It might be true that he was a pedlar--he chose to be a pedlar; though he was rich enough to kick his heels in his shop all day. But those who thought they had said all there was to be said about Bratti when they had called him a pedlar, were a good deal further off the truth than the other side of Pisa. How was it that he could put that ring in a stranger's way? It was, because he had a very particular knowledge of a handsome young signor, who did not look quite so fine a feathered bird when Bratti first set eyes on him as he did at the present time. And by a question or two Balda.s.sarre extracted, without any trouble, such a rough and rambling account of t.i.to's life as the pedlar could give, since the time when he had found him sleeping under the Loggia de' Cerchi. It never occurred to Bratti that the decent man (who was rather deaf, apparently, asking him to say many things twice over) had any curiosity about t.i.to; the curiosity was doubtless about himself, as a truly remarkable pedlar.
And Balda.s.sarre left Bratti's shop, not only with the dagger at his side, but also with a general knowledge of t.i.to's conduct and position-- of his early sale of the jewels, his immediate quiet settlement of himself at Florence, his marriage, and his great prosperity.
”What story had he told about his previous life--about his father?”
It would be difficult for Balda.s.sarre to discover the answer to that question. Meanwhile, he wanted to learn all he could about Florence.
But he found, to his acute distress, that of the new details he learned he could only retain a few, and those only by continual repet.i.tion; and he began to be afraid of listening to any new discourse, lest it should obliterate what he was already striving to remember.
The day he was discerned by t.i.to in the Piazza del Duomo, he had the fresh anguish of this consciousness in his mind, and t.i.to's ready speech fell upon him like the mockery of a glib, defying demon.
As he went home to his heap of straw, and pa.s.sed by the booksellers'
shops in the Via del Garbo, he paused to look at the volumes spread open. Could he by long gazing at one of those books lay hold of the slippery threads of memory? Could he, by striving, get a firm grasp somewhere, and lift himself above these waters that flowed over him?
He was tempted, and bought the cheapest Greek book he could see. He carried it home and sat on his heap of straw, looking at the characters by the light of the small window; but no inward light arose on them.
Soon the evening darkness came; but it made little difference to Balda.s.sarre. His strained eyes seemed still to see the white pages with the unintelligible black marks upon them.
CHAPTER THIRTY ONE.
FRUIT IS SEED.
”My Romola,” said t.i.to, the second morning after he had made his speech in the Piazza del Duomo, ”I am to receive grand visitors to-day; the Milanese Count is coming again, and the Seneschal de Beaucaire, the great favourite of the Cristianissimo. I know you don't care to go through smiling ceremonies with these rustling magnates, whom we are not likely to see again; and as they will want to look at the antiquities and the library, perhaps you had better give up your work to-day, and go to see your cousin Brigida.”
Romola discerned a wish in this intimation, and immediately a.s.sented.
But presently, coming back in her hood and mantle, she said, ”Oh, what a long breath Florence will take when the gates are flung open, and the last Frenchman is walking out of them! Even you are getting tired, with all your patience, my t.i.to; confess it. Ah, your head is hot.”
He was leaning over his desk, writing, and she had laid her hand on his head, meaning to give a parting caress. The att.i.tude had been a frequent one, and t.i.to was accustomed, when he felt her hand there, to raise his head, throw himself a little backward, and look up at her.
But he felt now as unable to raise his head as if her hand had been a leaden cowl. He spoke instead, in a light tone, as his pen still ran along.
”The French are as ready to go from Florence as the wasps to leave a ripe pear when they have just fastened on it.”
Romola, keenly sensitive to the absence of the usual response, took away her hand and said, ”I am going, t.i.to.”